This week a collaboration between the SubBass Academy of Electronic Music and Sample Tools by Cr2 yielded a novel concept: a producer competition that includes a free sample pack for you to use in the process of creating an original track. It’s a great giveaway and a great opportunity rolled into one. We also have some professional Foley sounds from Bend Audio Design and for Ableton Live 9 Suite and/or Push owners, an insane new Live Pack.

SubBass Producer Competition Sample Tools by Cr2 Pack This giveaway is 2X Dope: You get a collection of sounds taken from Sample Tools by Cr2’s catalog, and a producer competition with which you could win fabulous prizes (but no cash). It’s an interesting proposition as well: using the provided bass, chord, drum, FX, synth, vocal and other samples—as well as any of your own original content—you make a track that you believe would fit best at the festival (Outlook or Dimension festivals), festival stage, and time slot of your choosing. The winning producer will have their track promoted online, and win a free course from SubBass, VIP festival access, Sample Tools by Cr2 products and some other goodies. Entries are due March 20th, so get crackin’! (You don’t need to enter the competition to get the samples.)

Bend Audio Design Free Sound FX Packs French sound design, audio post and music-to-picture shop Bend Audio Design has begun the welcome new habit of putting together a free sound effect pack excerpted from each of their big new projects. All the packs were captured in Bend’s soundproofed recording room or in the field with a M/S pair of Sennheiser MKH8040 mics and are offered in either high-res 24-bit/96 kHz or 24-bit/192 kHz WAV.

For the Blood, Gore & Violence pack (282 MB), no living beings were harmed in the recording, but apparently some dead chickens, fish and some vegetables were put on the chopping block. The Fire Fury download (155 MB) is a starter pack for ignitions, wooshes, burning, meteors and other fire effects. Finally, the huge Weird Voice pack (1.66 GB) contains tons of roars, grunts, throat & breath noises that were all human made, but come in the original pitch and two sets of pitched-down but cleaned-up WAVs. Merci beaucoup, Bend Audio Design!

Ableton’s Beat Tools Live Pack Free for Live 9 Suite and Push Owners I’m not the hugest fan of spotlighting “free if you own X” offers, but like a lot of you, I am a huge fan, and user of, Ableton Live 9 Suite. And now Ableton has just added a fresh new Beat Tools Live Pack to the user account page of all registered Ableton Push and Live 9 Suite owners.